Retardation characteristics of a bent birefringent fiber and its application to fiber-optic sensing techniques using polarization mode interference

Retardation characteristics dependent on the direction and the curvature of a bent birefringent fiber are presented. The deflection analysis of a cantilever model in elasticity is applied to the bent fiber. Based on the retardation characteristics, fundamental techniques concerned with the separation of the two measurand effects contained in the output signal, the vibration measurement, and the multiplexing of the sensor arrays in the polarization mode interferometric fiber-optic sensing are proposed.